Rich Kid-Poor Kid: My First Memories of Class Differences
by Derek Hart reminisces about the times as a child when he noticed that not everyone lived like him and his family.
Not too long ago I was reading something on line that involved different people recalling the point in their lives when they first noticed differences in class and socio-economic status.
The rememberances mostly focused on either being poor and interacting with rich playmates, going to their spacious homes after school and seeing them with toys that they didn’t have, or being from well-to-do families riding in their limousines through an inner city neighborhood, seeing kids playing on rusted cars and running around on the street, thinking for the first time that not everybody lives like they do.
Reading those recollections led me to look back on the first time I noticed any personal class differences between me and people I knew; me earliest memories of this was when I was eight years old, in 1975…
Living with my grandparents in a rural area outside of Los Angeles, CA at the time while my mother was going to school and establishing herself, I was staying with her that summer of ‘75 in a tiny little flat in Santa Monica, CA’s, Pico Neighborhood, the inner city of that seaside town; believe it or not, affluent Santa Monica did – and does – have a ghetto with gangs, poverty, and all the problems that comes with that. It was definitely a place where one had to be cautious at night – and still is.
My mom worked as an after school recreation leader in ritzy, super-rich Beverly Hills in those years, teaching dance classes, supervising and having fun with the children of the rich and famous, and she would often take me along. It was then that I first noticed socio-economic differences between myself, my mom, the kids I was hanging out with, and their parents – which was obvious, since it was Beverly Hills.
I particularly remember one day when my mother was teaching a dance class to a group of girls.
The class was held at the home of one of the girls, and just like you would imagine, the place was big, nearly castle-like to a boy of eight. It had a swimming pool, tennis court, and what seemed like a huge back yard; the house looked like it came straight out of a 90210 episode.
I remember reading in the study while the class was going on, the room seemingly filled to the sky with books the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Though I was not yet ten at the time, I knew that the kids that mom was teaching lived a completely different life from me.
Liked it
